montana 1:3

We camped in a town park . Every small town west of the Missouri has a little one-table park where it's okay to camp as long as it's only one night. Staying on with car trouble once, in another western hamlet, a cowboy-looking joe came, checked the charts, set some dials over at the pump house, and that second night the sprinklers came on after I'd fallen asleep. We were out on the grass since the night was warm and still. I woke up getting wet, a terrifying thing compared to comfortable sleep, and getting mad as hell, too, I ran across to the pump house and stabbed the control panel with my pocketknife until the water quit. By that time, the kids were both up, Jack running circles in his pajama-shorts and no shirt, Jill dragging the gear over under the picnic canopy. The night was shot, probably as the locals intended. With the engine scraping like a dragging bumper,we drove to the nearest town with an all-night store and ate ice cream until dawn.

move on...